Again.

We ought to confess that we'd taken this year's summer trip to New York with the full intention of blowing off that surgery we were scheduled to have towards the end of June. We used the excuse that we wanted to get pictures of Jenny at her first job in an real live architectural office and that since her six month contract was up, we didn't want to miss our chance in case it wasn't renewed. Of course, we said we'd return in time and of course we had no intention of doing so. Just like poor Jenny with her leg, we'd convinced ourselves that our back was just fine and could certainly last the summer at least.

It didn't help that we let Jenny give us some impromptu surfing lessons almost as soon as we got to town. As with almost everything else Jenny-wise, she had her own unique way of doing so. After first showing us some of the basic moves on dry land, she then took us out into the bay in that car of hers for the next part of 'class', balancing on a moving board. Finding a shallow area outside of the main boating channels, she made a few slow speed runs while towing a surfboard with us trying to stand up on it behind her.

"You know... for a while I was a little worried you kids weren't going to go through with this. Thought you might've skipped town for good." Doctor Czepanski had our number all right.

"But that would mean we had a total disregard for the value of your time and busy schedule... So.... what's on the torture schedule today?"

"Ohhh... we're just going to put you two on the rack till we get a full confession of your crimes of heresy..."

He wasn't kidding about the rack. We have a surgical bed that was specially made for our heads to rest on while he has us on our stomach. Curiously, it was made by a little company that specialized in bondage racks for the fetish crowd. No kidding. Like Jenny once said, no matter what how deviant your interests are there's at least two shops in Greenwich Village with the equipment you need, and one of them is having a sale right now.

"Bet you got funny looks from everyone at baggage claims when that flopped out on the carousel."

"Hired a plane? Could it be?" We were hopeful. "That damned plane of his finally got grounded?"

Back in the late Thirties Dad treated himself to a brand new Lockheed Electra once his oil fortune was assured. Paid full price for it, so of course he has to squeeze yet another year of use out of the blasted thing.

"You know that plane has it in for us," we continued. "This one time we let him take us up in that evil thing, it kept tilting on us every time we tried to look out the window..."

"Sorry to disappoint you kids, but he had to fly it up to Alaska to pick up this survey team that got stranded. Seems their boss had to return home for some family emergency and took their ride with him."

"Oh that was Jenny's dad. We'd wondered what he'd done with the rest of his guys... Hey, think when you're done with us, you might have a look in on her? We're awful worried about her."

"Well I can't promise much. You know how jealous we doctors get when it comes to our prize patients..."

"Yeah, you're practically like wives... wouldn't be surprised if the anesthesiologist doesn't clock us with a rolling pin just for getting X-rayed while you were in transit..."

"Oh we won't be putting you two under this time. Just a spinal with sedation. I was checking with the pharmacy, for a small suburban hospital, they've got quite a powerful arsenal on hand. Thought I heard them say something about 'Bolivian fish paralyzers'?"

"They do a brisk carriage trade with the Hausfrau and Gray Flannel Suit crowd around these parts. There's this one lady who's hubby worked for the Nonspecific Voltaics corporation..."

"Oh, the one with all that annoying blood in her drugstream?" Jenny's Doctor Burkhart had popped in for a look-see at the shiny new doctor that's been turning his hospital upside down.

Behind him was Miss Peechi, our nurse and governess that father brought home with him after he was stationed in Korea to assist with reconstruction after the Japanese were sent packing in 'Forty five. He got her out just in time to miss the Korean war but still those years under Japanese colonial occupation taught her to hide her intelligence behind a veil of blond stupidity, and we're not being figurative when we say that. She was a devoted user of that wondrous elixir of hydrogen and peroxide that magically turns the unappealing and uninteresting into the devastatingly attractive.

"Betcha thought you'dve been rid of us by now..." We were pushing the quarter century mark after all.

"Ohh... That don't bother me none. Long as I get my rent paid on Friday..." The mix of Asian lilt , Oklahoma twang is like an oxide of nitrogen to us.

"You know... All the times I've been up this way I've never actually seen New York City till now."

We did a quick review of all the times she'd come up with us. Most times we'd arrive at Penn Station and transfer right to a Long Island Railroad car. In theory she could've seen some city from the windows but all the arrivals we recall were at night. She maybe could've seen it by plane a couple times but we knew that our dad gave the New York City air traffic corridor a very wide berth.

"You don't say... What'd ya do, come in over Jersey?"

"No... We flew down from... from..." Tapping her arm, throat and chest in that order, she remembered, "Skin-neck-titty..." Schenectady.

That's our Peechi.

She tossed a coin to see which one of us was getting the IV needle and set about the task of wiring us for the electrocardiograph machine. That usually gets done first so that everyone can get used to what two hearts beating in the same chest cavity looks like. Even we marvel at the sight of them on the oscilloscope.

With our chest wired for sound, we flopped onto The Rack so they could wheel us into surgery. This was going to be our home away from home for the next few days so we did our best to get comfortable. We laid on our stomachs with our arms stretched out in a pose resembling that of a diver. With our heads projecting over the side of the bed, our foreheads rested in padded cradles - something like the ancient Egyptians used to use. A set of padded 'wings' to each side kept our arms from flopping down to the floor. To force the back into the curvature the doctors wanted, the legs were dropped about five degrees or so.

At least there was a mirror set under our faces so we could see some of what's was going on.

"You know the rules... No sodies for you till after!"

"Maybe some magazines? It's gonna be a while..."

"No time for that... I go scrub up now..."

Feeling like a slab meat on the carving table, we held hands and squished our faces together for a few seconds to comfort ourselves.

The next ordeal on the agenda was the search for one of the 'dead spots' so they could give us the spinal anesthetic. That involved our doctor Marco-ing our back with a sewing needle and one or both of us Polo-ing with an understated 'Ow' till he got no response. It only took a minute to find one he could use and all we felt when he did use it was a sensation like a finger poking into our back.

There were a few more minutes of time killing before the good stuff kicked in and our lower quarters ceased to exist - on the paperwork they were supposed to send to the brain at least. We had this image of ourselves as being the realm of some great empire with soldiers at different outposts along our body. We always felt bad for the poor soldiers stationed way down at the toes, especially on a cold wet wintery day.

"I had a patient in the other day for an exam," Doctor Burkhart idly mentioned as they set up their equipment. "Had these really gnarled up looking feet. I asked him about them he said, 'Oh I had a bout of 'toe-lio' when I was a kid'..."

We could hear the clink of instruments being laid out as he continued.

"Then I saw his knees weren't so great looking either. 'Oh I got a bad case of 'knee-sels' in the army'..."

We heard a brief whir of the bone saw as they gave it a run check.

"So finally he drops his drawers and I say, Let me guess... 'smallcox'..."

We never heard anyone laugh at his joke. Strangely enough, we heard sounds like they were putting their instruments away. Although we were a tad drowsy, we'd felt no sensation of going asleep or of any detectable break in time that we could account for.

We noticed feeling some sort of towel on our back over the ribs being held down by some sort of strapping. Soldiers in the lower extremities were still not sending in their reports.

"No... we're done," Peechi replied. "Even got your sodies. They'll be waiting for you in your room."

That was a new one for us. At least we had an idea in miniature of what Jenny must've gone through for nearly a whole day. Too bad they couldn't hit her with another dose of that stuff so she could forget the next few days. Since we got visits from her friends and family after they saw her, we were kept reasonably up to date on her condition. Not that Amityville's own little newspaper, didn't have 'Local Girl Fights for Life' as it's lead.

On Friday she was reliving the week before, thrashing about in bed and calling out for help as if lost at sea. Saturday she was 'speaking in tongues', muttering this song in a strange language that Ezzie recognized is as possibly Norwegian with maybe some German thrown in. That Sunday she rested but on Monday she had her hands to her face and was making these little movements that looked like she was tying little knots. By late Tuesday she was still pretty groggy but otherwise lucid so the next day they took a chance on moving her into our room.

"What are you guys in for?" We were still on the rack so there was no hiding it from her now.

"We decide to have some back work done while you were out. It's the latest summer rage... All the kids are doing it! How've you been holding up?"

"I could've sworn I mighta killed somebody a couple days ago. Then it was like her ghost kept looking over me. Didn't seem like she was really sore about it..."

To Jenny's amazement, the nurse she had taken a swing at stepped in to change our IV bottles. She even felt it necessary to reach over and pat the nurse's arm to see if she was real or not. Satisfied, she just shook her head in disbelief.

"At least... I won't ever have to worry about being a dope fiend... After I'm done with all this, I probably wouldn't even want to touch an aspirin... Oh, I am so tired..."

She let out a yawn and went right to sleep. By the time she woke up later that evening, we were already off the rack and into a proper bed with a tray of solid food in front of us. Jenny felt ambitious enough to try some of our Jell-O so we shared.

"Oh just take the whole thing Jenny. There's plenty more where that came from..."

She had the strangest of appetites. If she was hungry and there wasn't any food or any food she felt like eating, her appetite would shrug it's shoulders and wander off till the next scheduled mealtime and even then it wouldn't try to get her to make up for that missed meal.

She did try to make it up to her appetite in liquid form.

"When I was in school," Jenny reminisced over a carton of chocolate milk, "I used to live on two half-pints of chocolate milk for lunch every day. I remember how the lunch ladies used to worry about me. You know, somebody once said that preemies almost always get overfed growing up on account of people worrying about them so much."

"I used to tell them I'd had a big breakfast or something but really I just didn't want to have to use the bathroom in school so much. Just didn't want to waste the time. Now I got all the time in the world... and I'm so damned tired..."

And back to dreamland she went till that evening's visiting hour when she'd mustered enough energy to at least acknowledge the presence of her visitors and apologize for going right back to sleep. She'd carry on this pattern for the next few days while they tinkered with her medications a little more. At least she'd stopped reliving that night in the bay - no cries in the night or strange motions with her hands.

We did hear her talking to Scott again. From the tone of her voice, it was as if he' d just walked in off the street after all these months like nothing happened.

"Geeze Scott... Where the hell have you been keeping yourself? Everyone thinks you're dead!"

"Well I don't think that's very funny! Your mom's been worried sick about you and I don't mean that figuratively..."

As an aside, we should note that Jenny had looked after Mis'ess Misener in Boston during the big search for Scott, where she was getting treated for what they'd thought might be stomach cancer, but it turned out to be a severe ulcer. That's why she had the time to look for information on her grandmother.

"I'm sorry... for a minute there, I thought you were for real... So what are you supposed to be? A ghost or something?"

"Ohhhh... " She seemed a tad disappointed. "A Freudian hallucination you say..."

"Oh... do we have to go into that? That old story ought to have run its course by now."

"I still have feelings for him... very strong feelings. But you know... if he was gonna make his move he ought to have done so by now."

"Maybe he was... Well it's too late now. That ship has pretty much sailed..."

"Shoulda never looked him up in the first place... He's been nuthin' but bad luck..."

"Oh, I shouldn't have said that..."

"After everything that's been going on, I just couldn't look at him the same way... sure as hell couldn't look him in the face..."

"Oh... but he has such a pretty face..."

As she adjusted the bed to try and get some sleep she concluded, "...and he was so good with kids too."

It was the last weekend in June, and now she could muster enough strength to stay awake for maybe four or five hours a day in one and a half hour stretches. With her electrolytes deemed to be in balance, her doctor felt ambitious enough to move her from the broths and aspics she was struggling down to solid foods and as luck would have it, Saturday was Salisbury steak and reconstituted mashed potatoes day.

A kid in a candy store staffed by ponies and unicorns couldn'tve been happier than Jenny as she sawed away at the miniature feast laid before her.

"It's amazing how little things can mean so much in here... maybe tomorrow I can go use the can instead of that glorified slop bucket they stick under ya..."

She had a go at the sliced carrots before realizing, "Whew... never woulda believed you could get winded... just from chewing... Yeesh..."

After a few minutes she got her second wind and was able to grind down bits of her dinner roll. At least the dollop of chocolate pudding for dessert wouldn't tax her energy reserves.

"Mmmmm... choccie pudding! Somebody up there must like me!"

"Oh... my... gawd! I picked the wrong religion! That Resurrection shit is for real!"

"Well, you said you needed another soldier for The Cause. Didn't wanna check out early and miss the fun..."

"Oh, you didn't miss much... There was a slight insurrection offa Madison this afternoon... Heard they're having a little trouble with the Eskimos up in Alaska..."

"What happened? Somebody rob a bank with a hair dryer on a long extension cord?"

"Yeah! Got right into the vault and everything!"

"Just when Nanook of the North had enough in his account for an air conditioner..."

"Oh. he's OK.... Gonna get one them with all them Green Stamps he's got saved up. Gets his wife a fur coat every year so they really add up... Speakin' of fur coats..."

Jenny saw that N'eddie was looking at the fresh plumage on her forearms.

"Yeah... I'm gettin' a little fuzzy... Shoulda brought a camera... I can see the headline in ParaNorma 'Sasquatch sighted on Long Island'..."

We had the answer for that one.

"Yeah... nurses didn't want to sneak up on you with a razor. Not after the way you reacted to that one who went and dropped a tray next to your bed... Even the Puerto Rican nurse is scared of you..."

And that was saying something. Hey, we saw 'West Side Story'.

Jenny's attention turned to the Pandaflex folder under N'eddie's arm.

"Oh this... it's a manuscript we're thinking of serializing... Thought you might want something to read while you're in here... Maybe you can do a little editing if you're up to it?"

She passed it over to Jenny who considered the rather portentous title, 'Ich Bin Eine Berliner - My Life Growing Up in Weimar Germany - by Eloise J. Kirker', before skimming through a few random pages.

This from a girl who regarded the Roaring Twenties as highly overrated.

"In the first place... you oughta run with the tag line 'I was a Teenage Flapper' with a big exclamation point on the end..."

"Say... How much editing is this lady willing to take? I'm sure you're gonna want mostly the sex stuff... I was thinking we could sell it as 'The Catcher in the Reich'..."

"All she cared about is us not making things up or making her retype a buncha stuff. 'You gotta do the paperwork on any big changes' was what she said."

"Fair enough," Jenny shrugged as she put the manuscript in the compartment under her feeding table for safekeeping. "You better call up the next batter, I think I'll be going into a slump pretty soon..."

N'eddie left the room to check out the on deck circle.

"Ohh! You've got balls coming up here!" That got our interest. "What do you think? You think you can wreck somebody's life and come sniffin' around with the old glad hand like it was all some big game! No... Get out! Get out! This son of a bitch does not come in here."

All we could see through the doorway was Sheriff Misener make a menacing reach for his billy club before stepping out of view.

"Yeah... Mister... I think you better make like a tree and go find a nice forest somewhere..."

"At least he didn't tell him to photosynthesize carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbohydrates," Gloria remarked as she walked into the room. Sizing Jenny up, she couldn't help noting "Nice to see you found a good use for that money I gave you..."

"And to think... I was gonna blow it all on bubble gum and comic books!"

"Oh well... At least you're sharing some of it with your friends..."

"I suppose I don't want to know who N'eddie was yelling at. Not like I probably couldn't guess... At least the sheriff has a new friend to play with. He's been getting awful lonesome lately..."

"It was just a really bad ulcer. They ended up having to cut the rotted part out... Amazing what nerves can do to you isn't it?"

As if to emphasize her point, Jenny wheeled back as a wave of fatigue swept over her, yawning, and panting for air. The poor girl looked like these oxygen starved people we'd seen on a skiing trip to the Colorado Rockies we'd taken. Mind you, we were just as badly off, perhaps even worse since having to power two brains canceled out the advantage of an extra middle lung.

"Whew! I am so sorry," Jenny gasped I don't know if I'm going to make it through this visiting hour... Hey, is that Bitsey? Bitsey!"

A girl a few years younger and a few inches shorter than Jenny peeked into the room smiling when Jenny recognized her.

"Oh you're like a shot of oxygen right to the brain! You guys remember Bitsey? The one Jan and I used to torture and nurture back at the old house?"

We remembered her. Elizabeth 'Bitsey' Van Der Plaat was just about the only Van Der Plaat we'd ever seen visiting Jenny house of the past summers, probably on account of her father Oliver being college friends with Jenny's dad. Bitsey's mother, the former Miss Elizabeth Ward, had been sent over from England as a war bride and was staying with the Platts because they could take care of her. Jenny once told us about how Bitsey was born only a few days after her sixth birthday - an extra birthday present she said.

It was Janice that filled us in on the details.

According to the family legend, Jenny was the first person Bitsey saw coming out of the womb. She had been pressed into emergency midwifery for what had to be the fastest childbirth in Suffolk County history. Supposedly, it only took about a minute and a half after the water broke although Jenny recalled having to shake Elizabeth awake so she might've been in labor while passed out.

Even with the six year age difference they bonded fairly well. Bitsey naturally looked up to Jenny who was at once annoyed and flattered by the affection. So Jenny got the big sister/little sister relations she never got to have with Janice. Even though Bitsey had Jenny's high rounded forehead, she asserted her individuality by letting her auburn hair down at the sides with the middle combed back in a squared off look that Jenny would lovingly tease her as resembling the surgically altered noggin of Frankenstein's monster.

We didn't want to eat into Jenny's visiting time so we gave Bitsey a courtesy wave before whipping closed the privacy curtain. They were on pretty decent bearings - just about got to our knees.

"Oh, they had to have some back surgery done on account of a revolting little accident in the emergency room. They were giving my heart a jump start and they got zapped as well. Isn't that right you two?"

"We were supposed to have the surgery eventually but we'd been resisting... That just galvanized us into action!"

That got us a look from Gloria.

"You two sure have the capacitance for bad puns today don't you?"

"Quite brilliant of you to induce that. We'll try to conduct ourselves a little better..."

"Well maybe you'd better damp down the frequency a bit... Somebody liable to blow a fuse..."

"We suppose there's that potential... Wouldn't want any static..."

"Just so we're on the same wavelength..."

While we were playing electrical terminology one-upmanship with Gloria, Bitsey and Jenny had been catching up on old times. We'd known from Jenny's ebullient praise and passing out of cards that Bitsey had a keen mind for the business world and was on her first year of a full scholarship at Wellesley. When they pay you to come to their school even when you could afford it yourself, that's saying something. Of course Jenny had three top notch schools vying for her affection but who's keeping score besides us?

"I've always been amazed that you had what you wanted to do in life figured out as soon as you did... Here it is my first year in college and only now I figured out what I want to so and it's been under my nose all this time!"

"Oh really?"

"Yeah! Seriously! You know how I used to do those 'Trip-tix' things when I was working at the Auto Club? Oh wait... I don't think I ever told you about that, did I?"

"Anyways... You do know they used to let me help plan out class trips at Emma? Of course you did. You were over at RPI... Well anyway I sorta figured out that I actually like planning trips more than I like going on them!"

"I remember how you used to wear that pink Jackie Kennedy number on those charter trips down to The City. Holding that little clipboard when you took the roll... it looked like a little religious ceremony between you and the driver..."

"I supposed I did find my calling... You know, everybody used to love how you knew all the buildings and could tell them all the stories behind them."

"I was a regular Jimmy FitzPatrick, wasn't I?"

"Uhmm... yeah... So anyways... I was talking to my roommate Brenda and we were thinking of starting a little air tour operation just to test the waters... We figure there's a nice little market in arranging class trips. Brenda says by the time we graduate most of the airlines will be selling off their propeller planes and some might even be letting go of some of the first jets they bought..."

With mock sniffles tears and breaking voice, Jenny sobbed, "Oh... My little Bitsey's growing up..."

"Awwww... Oh... Hey... I was wondering if your dad still had that big airplane of his? Was wondering what kind of lead time he would need if I wanted to charter it sometime later this summer."

"You probably ought to talk to him about that... Isn't he here?"

"Oh, he got one look at Gloria in the parking lot and turned the car right around. Half expected to see your poor mother come flying out the door like in those old time gangster movies!"

"Geeze," Jenny sighed, "I don't think even Dag Hammarskjöld could've gotten those two together. Guess that new guy will have to take that up."

"Speaking of feuds, any of that shit in the papers true?"

"Kinda... sorta... they just blew everything way out of proportions... You'd think she was royalty and lowly little peon me was supposed to be at her beck and call... the way he was carrying on..."

"Sheesh... So... uhmmm... you don't have a million dollars coming to you?"

"Oh good heaven no... just the hundred fifty... and I haven't even signed for that yet. You better talk to grandma about that later... I'm probably gonna hafta try to live on that now... assuming Doctor Burkhart doesn't get it all..."

"N'eddie said she was taking care of that.," we shouted.

"The hell she is! I've got money in the bank!"

Jenny let out a groan of discomfort before conceding, "Oh... I might as well let her take care of it... I might need proof I was working somewhere else in case Drake decides he wants that project I was working on... Oh! That poor building! Tell me somebody put it in the garage so it wouldn't get ruined!"

"Jan and Stacey finished it up for you," we answered. "Hope you don't mind..."

"Ooh! Did Janice do those little silhouettes of hers? Oh, I love those..."

They weren't so much silhouettes as the kind of cartoony profiles like you'd see on tin-toy aeroplanes. They were much beloved by her circle of friends no matter what they were called.

"Yeah! Even put a line of guys at the urinal looking out the window like they were king of the world!"

Yeah, that's the naughty level of wit Janice works on. Of course, the way she drew it, you'd have to know what to look for in order to know what you were looking at.

"Guess I got something to look forward to now," Jenny concluded with a satisfied yawn. As exacting as she might seem at first blush, Jenny was remarkably willing to cede major design decisions over her work to others.

By now, the boost of energy Jenny got from Bitsey's appearance was fagging out on her. After the third long yawn, Bitsey got the message and bade her farewell, leaving Gloria behind for the rest of the visit. Mention of The Great Rainbow Room Snub had her concerned about something.

"I hate to bring this up," but of course, she was going to bring it up.

"...and you can tell me it's none of my business," fat chance Jenny would tell her that now.

"Oh, she wanted to know why I didn't come to the funeral... she'd sent a plane down to Mexico and everything. I told her it was because I wasn't in the family..."

"I thought that might've come up... You know there's something about that I ought to tell you..."

Jenny, in her face saving way tried to stop her there.

"Uhmmm... I ought to tell you something first. You know when I'd gone over to Boston to look after Mis'ess Misener? Well I had a lot of time to myself... and you know how curious I get when it comes to family history..."

"Ohhh... so you know about Sylvia... I take it Mis'ess Kennedy knows too..."

Jenny nodded in affirmation. She was getting punchier now with her head rolling from side to side to try and stay awake.

"I hate to leave you with this... but... I feel like I ought to tell somebody in the family... when I uhm... 'sealed the deal' with the Fitzgeralds... I might've picked up your mother as a souvenir..."

The room fell into a quiet broken only by the low hum of hospital equipment. Jenny was down for the count for sure this time, so Gloria gave her a loving pat on the forehead and a stroke of her hair before leaving in silence.

Maybe a half hour or an hour later, Jenny had the last word.

"My, my... The things you learn about a person!"

Sunday was a day of plans deferred. Jenny had hoped to make it to a real live bathroom but...

"Looks like the little ferret is hibernating today," Jenny concluded, having thrown another dinner down the hatch. "Just don't feel like going."

Monday was a day of medical testing for the lot of us. Even though illness doesn't take a coffee break, hospitals pretty much run on a nine-to-five weekday schedule. Jenny was scheduled for a battery of blood and heart tests. We were going under the old fluoroscope for a look at our spine.

The ferret growled a little but held his ground.

"Guess I'll be a 'four-flusher' when the levee finally breaks..."

Jenny, wanting a sporting chance to make it to the can should the opportunity presents itself, spurned the offer of a laxative and by visiting hour her patience was rewarded. The ferret had finally decided he'd rather be a sea otter so Bitsey was given the dubious honor of spotting Jenny as she cleaned and jerked herself out of bed.

Roman Gladiators should've enjoyed such a triumphal procession.

The old saying about being careful what you ask for never rang truer as her new ferret spent the better part of the evening with housekeeping tasks but Jenny gamely managed to avoid the bedpan each time. Even though she could barely manage the Thorazine Shuffle, she was on her feet at last.

Thursday was a travel day for the three of us as we were transferred by Medicar to the Idyllbrook clinic - where the elite meet to sneeze - which was way up in Gatsby country on the North Shore of Long Island. Idyllbrook was run out of a former mansion of the Georgian style, built in what Jenny's German grandmother called the 'Grounding Time' before the turn of the century. Even though it was mainly one of those nice little private clinics catering to wealthy Patroons suffering from that euphemistic catch-all 'exhaustion', Idyllbrook actually did do some meaningful physical therapy on the side.

"You suppose," we asked Jenny as they wheeled us to the door, "when it gets dark we'll be able to pick out Daisy Buchanan's dock light?"

"No... but I do believe we're right across the courtesy bay from Bitsey's place..." Pointing to the nurses residence, she added, "I'm pretty sure that was Nick Carraway's little 'cottie' over there."

With day rates that started at what the Amityville public hospital charged for a week, there was no question that we were going to be picking up Jenny's tab at this joint. The summer was starting to heat up and Jenny was in no condition to be cooped up in what was the only bedroom in the house without air conditioning - the Platts preferred not to spoil the looks of the 'money sides' of their house with the ugly things, Jenny preferred to let the sea breeze waft though the two windows her room.

"I suppose it's a good thing I've been able to make some sort of peace with grandmother," Jenny considered, "seeing as I'll probably be seeing a lot more of her now..."

"I can only guess, but I imagine it's because my other grandmother used to smuggle booze down from that French colony off of Canada during Prohibition for the swells of Glen Cove."

"Whoa! Your grandmother was a bootlegger?" That certainly got our attention.

"Well she didn't do it full time! Just whenever she felt like going for a long sail. It was something to keep her occupied when there was nothing else for her to do. Granddad was pretty well off even back then so it's not like she was doing it for the money."

Returning to the subject of her grandmother and her father...

"You know, my dad kept his dislike for her pretty well hidden, though I suppose I should've figured it out. He'd always want to go play a round at the country club with grampa Philip and my dad doesn't even like golf. Eventually he'd just drop us off at the house and pick us up later if he didn't just claim that he was too busy with work."

"Oh well," She concluded. "Guess I can't really blame him after what she did to him... That's pretty low, especially considering what happened in her past. But then, that's how some people take out their frustrations, isn't it?"

We left it for another day to go into why Jenny had broken off relationships with her grandmother.

The first treatment on the docket for us was a cleansing 'schvitz und sitz' - a steam bath and a mineral bath. Since Jenny had the bum ticker she had to forgo the thermal shock of the 'schvitz' and settle for a longer 'sitz'.

"Tell you what kind place this is," we observed as we joined Jenny in the hydrotherapy tub. "You know how those steamboxes in cartoons have those handles where if you stick a broom handle in 'em, you can trap somebody? They designed the handles on the ones here so you can't do that!"

"That makes sense. I'm sure Jay Gatsby knew a few people that'd try to pull that old gag on him back in the day. Gee, I hope this thing is rustproof..."

Jenny's gammy leg was locked in a fearsome looking polio brace to keep the muscle immobilized.

"I'm beginning to wonder... if I'm gonna be stuck in this stupid thing for a while, what good being here is gonna be. Might as well be at home..."

"You two have never been to the Catskills, have you?"

We shook our heads no, adding, "Don't tell N'eddie. She's liable to revoke our membership..."

In between treatment sessions, to which Jenny came to the conclusion that 'therapist' was actually two words instead of one, Jenny actually got some reading done on that manuscript N'eddie left with her. Going by Jenny's tape recorded synopsis to N'eddie, the lady was quite the fashionable degenerate.

She was born Elsa Louisa 'Eloise' Kirchherr to a Jewish mother and Christian father about a year before the First World War. Parents changed the family name to Kirker to protest anti-English sentiment going on during the war. Lost her elder brother on one of those quiet Western Front days - spends a lot of pages trying to imagine what he was like and that sort of stuff. Father survived the war and was a high-ranking Berlin police officer.

Spends several more pages recounting her teenage years growing up with her best friend Verna Falkenberg in the suburban 'Britz' section of Berlin. Verna's mother was nurse as well as an abortionist on the side.

"Oh krickey," Jenny added to the recording as an aside, "I think I've met Verna. She was at that party of Emily 's I'd gone to..."

Story goes into her sexual 'education'. She lost her virginity while accompanying Verna and her mother on her 'nursing' rounds amongst the cathouses of Berlin. Client saw her in the parlor and had to have her. Her only objection was that she didn't want to take 'work' away from the girls that actually worked there.

The story wasn't all about sex, she went into her first 'true love', a freelance and studio photographer, Wilhelm 'Fritz' Namen. Looks like she was an aspiring photojournalist herself, would do artsey projects like 'Whores in the Gallery', basically photographs of her prostitute friends at an art gallery. She did a similar set at the German Reichstag.

Then she goes back into the sex stuff. She had quite the retinue of lesbian girlfriends - oddly enough, one of them, Louella Du Ellia, had a heart problem that ultimately resulted in her collapsing to her death on the platform of Berlin's elevated train. Father actually let her sit through the autopsy.
Or made her sit through it as some sort of warning - doesn't say exactly.

We did. We still do.

"I remember you telling me how fascinating it was to look at them and think about how the girls in them were once sitting at the end of time with no idea of the future. Book is sort of like the story of some of those girls isn't it?"

During the summer she would take part in these rooftop sex parties, during which she plays 'matchmaker' with an American girl named Polly and her dad - Polly's father not Eloise's.

In Nineteen twenty-nine her life took a turn when she was shot 'in the piano lessons' by her own dad while covering the May Day riots with her boyfriend. He was trampled by a horse and lived long enough to die in her arms in the police infirmary. Apparently her wounds weren't too serious because she made her big break with the family by walking out of the station. Has a nice scene where she looks for her childhood apartment and sees the ghost of her late brother there.

Rest of the story is about how she and her friend Verna marry a pair of wealthy South American homosexuals and of course there's lots of sex on the Zeppelin ride down to Rio De Janeiro for their 'honeymoon' before settling in Buenos Aires. He life takes another turn in Nineteen forty-two when German expatriates are rounded up by the Argentineans and shipped to the United States to exchange for American expatriates stuck in Germany.

Jenny noted to N'eddie as an aside, that someone ought to check on that last item as her German grandmother had mentioned she had been inexplicably detained by the F.B.I. for a few months after the start of the Second World War herself.

Since Eloise was part Jewish, being sent back to the Fatherland would've meant a sure death sentence but she is 'saved' at the last minute by marrying one of the officers. Verna did get sent back but she wasn't Jewish so she had a sporting chance to survive the war. In the meantime Eloise gave birth to a daughter named...

"Oh... my... God..." Jenny launched the manuscript out of her hand like it had suddenly become radioactive, all the while still dictating her synopsis. "N'eddie... tell me you didn't know this might possibly be Emily Drake's mother!"

"Tell me who might be Emily Drake's mother?" It was visiting time and N'eddie had just walked through the door.

"Geeze.. You sure know when to walk into a room," declared a surprised Jenny.
"Just keeping you 'goyls' guessing," N'eddie replied, waving her hands in some sort of mock Jew jit-su combat stance.

Jenny picked up the manuscript and tapped it with her finger. "That's Walter Drake's wife! I'm pretty sure of it. Married to an architect, has a friend named Verna and daughter named Emily... and Emily said her mom was Jewish. Remember that kids?"

"Honest Injun, it was passed to me by a literary agent. Barely even glanced at it before passing it on to you. You don't suppose she knew you were working for us do you?"

"Hard to say. Maybe you ought to take that up at the next meeting..."

With nowhere to go with Jenny cue, N'eddie stood in silence to consider her options.

"So... do you want us to pass on this?" Naomi wasn't one to take the ethical conflict of business and friendship lightly. We're almost sure she would've canceled the project on Jenny's say-so even if they were already financially committed.

"No... it's a good read. Might be a little racy for the flagship but that's your call. Look, I'm a big girl... like they say in the Mob, business is business... This looks like to be a pretty decent money maker..."

Considering the project from another angle, she added, "I do hope she at least gave Emily a heads up that she was writing this thing. I may not like the girl much but I don't dislike her... certainly not enough to want to actively ruin her social life or anything..."

Would you have expected anything less of Jenny?

Passing the manuscript to N'eddie she added, "You're probably going to have to take me off this though... maybe you can put the twins on this. They've been chomping at the bit for a byline lately. Besides they like this Nineteen-twenties stuff a lot more than I do..."

N'eddie handed the manuscript back saying, "Tell you what I'll do. I'll talk to the lady and see what she wants done about this. I'm gonna go look for a pay phone right now. In the meantime just hang on to this..."

"Just so you know, we were planning to go down to the solarium to wait for my cousin Bitsey. She said was coming over by boat and I wanted to watch for her."

"Not a problem! Why don't I just roll you down there myself?"

We weren't alone in the solarium, there was an old lady in the left corner doing some knitting and to the right of us was someone sitting so fully reclined that we couldn't make out any more detail.

"Hey... Did somebody just come in? Hello?"

Of all the clinics on Long Island, we would have to pick the one treating that surfer to bring Jenny to. Naturally, we looked over to Jenny to gauge her reaction but she had her attention fixed on a tiny speck stepping into a skiff across the courtesy bay. Denied a decent reaction shot from Jenny, we looked back over to the figure on our right.

"Just a couple fellow vegetables," we replied, "trying to get little sun."

"Oh... You'll forgive me if I don't look at you while I'm talking... The way they got me patched up... I really can't turn my head..."

He tried to turn to us anyway but a wave of pain turned him back.

"Don't knock yourself out on our account...."

As it turned out, he really did knock himself out from the pain. At least he kept quiet while N'eddie returned to talk to Jenny. As it turns out Eloise had her in mind on account of having enjoyed some of those 'Dispatches from Desdemona'. That Emily had suggested getting Jenny to work on serializing her book was just a coincidence after the fact.

"So... they want Lady Desdemona..."

Jenny considered the situation as she tracked Bitsey's progress across the bay. She was cutting a pretty straight course given how choppy the bay was getting and how dainty she looked in her Sunday best outfit. Jenny finally agreed to continue working on the project as long as she didn't have to meet Eloise face-to-face and any correspondences between her and Eloise were to be as Lady Desdemona. The deal more or less completed, N'eddie left Jenny to her vigil.

Turning back to the window Jenny sighed, "I really ought to stop watching for Bitsey... Even if she did founder in that thing, there'd be nothing I could do for her way up here..."

Strange how the quarter-inch or so of glass separating us from the outside world makes all the difference as the once muffled sounds of their walking up the path now echoed through the building once they crossed the threshold. Bitsey seemed to know the family and seemed especially friendly to the little girl with them, challenging her in a race to the solarium.

"Hey! Hey mister! Look alive! You got visitors!" We slapped the side of his chair for good measure. Good thing we did, because that little girl was practically ready to leap right into his arms, with a shriek of 'Dougie!' as her only warning. After a minute of hugs and kisses she caught a glimpse of us and gasped in an almost hateful recognition. We remembered her too.

After we had our surfing lessons with Jenny, she drove us and brother Avi out to Gilgo beach to have a go at some real waves. Just about every office boy, soda jerk and gas jockey in the New York Metropolitan area with a surfboard and a ride must've called in sick that day as the beach was fairly teeming with rippling neoprene clad youths. A few of the hardier specimens dared the cold Atlantic in little more than swimming trunks but we went with our Scuba diving suit while Jenny met the water halfway with a wet vest.

Not that Jenny ever got to get that much surfing done, her little Amphicar was the hit of the beach and she spent much of the first hour or two driving her new found best friends in and out of the surf. When she finally got to mount her board, it was so she could sit behind the breakers and keep a watch over us. We finally did well enough to earn the oh so affectionate nickname 'The Hydra' from the bowing and fearing peanut gallery of boardsmen that had gathered 'round to watch us.

All hail The Hydra.

We had planned on some filmed sequences to go with our planned appearance at the Worlds Fair so Avi and Jenny went and got their movie cameras to squeeze off a few reels of our surfing prowess- she would film us from the sea and he would get us from land. Almost immediately we ran into problems with this one crazy hotshot who kept zipping into our shot. As it turned out it was that surfer but at the time we knew him only as someone Jenny had worked with over that winter.

He was reasonably apologetic, it seems that his peripheral vision isn't all that good from all the welding he does. Jenny let it pass but politely suggested that maybe he ought to look for a quieter stretch of sand before he went and hurt somebody.

The three of us dropped what we were doing and headed to shore to take up Avi's defense. Jenny had the diplomatic skills so she smoothed things over with the ranger leaving us to deal with the little pestilence. We tried to be nice, explaining that millions of decent people owned movie cameras so she shouldn't go around disparaging people that use them but she dropped the Hate-bomb on us shrieking, "Get away from me you two-headed freak!"

Keeping the thinnest façade of civility, we let her have it.

"You know what... You know what... Just for that, the Fates are going to take away the one you love most.... And just because we told you about that, they gonna do it to us too so if something bad happens to you or us in the next few days it will be... All... Your... Fault!"

That really spooked her. That spooked her way more than we expected. Maybe it was the way we said it, one of us said one sentence and the other continued and saying the 'all your fault' in unison, but she wailed a really sad, "Noooo! Noooo! Don't say that!", like someone had said that to her before and it had come true.

Come that evening when her Dougie and our Jenny had disappeared we were still incensed enough to remind her about how she'd caused this all to happen. Yes she was just a little kid and yes, that was exceptionally mean of us, but even though we can take a little good-natured kidding at our expense, having our 'differentness' thrown in our face as brutally as she did just brings out the worst in us.

We turned our attention to Jenny and Bitsey.

"You know Bits... the way you were coming across the bay.... I half expected to see a big old seagull swoop down on you and try to take a chunk out of you! Oh I am tired today..."

"I half expected one of them to leave a chunk on me! Hey! You know who your in the room with?"

"Yeah, Doug Montelli. He did some welding work for me last winter. You know on that earthquake study?"

"Huh... Oh right... you do know he was the guy that 'Surf Angel' lady rescued?"

"Geeze Jen... I'm a lot safer in the bay than on these roads!"

"Yes but I wouldn't be looking at you all the way over. You know how worried I can get when I get sick..."

"Well if it makes you feel better," Bitsey opened the front of her blue vest to reveal the lining. "See... it's a life vest... and I do know how to get back into a boat. if it capsizes... I was paying attention those times when you took me out in The Sound. I'm not one of those Aquanetters, you know..."

We'd forgotten that Aquanetter was a derisive term that had made the rounds of the Long Island high schools some time after big beehived hair came into vogue.

"I know... I know... I know... It's just... You know... when I get out of here why don't you and me take a nice drive upstate. Get off this damned island for a change... I've always wanted to see the rest of this state and never had the time... There's so much open country left up there... like these lakes shaped like fingers... there's some really nice rock formations..."

Jenny was in tears as a wave of fatigue swept over her. Bitsey gave her the best comforting pat on the hand she could manage, having never dealt with someone as out of sorts as Jenny was.

She made this neutral face like she was puzzling out a problem before brightening up with an idea. It was the same face she made when looking for a place to tie up her little boat. Turning to the Montellis she asked, "Uhmm, hey... I think Jenny once mentioned you guys lived over by Glen Cove?"

"Yeah right over in Sea Cliff. Why? You need a lift?"

"Well I live right across the bay... in Manorhaven?" Pointing in the general direction of her house she continued, "I took a little boat over here... Well... Jenny would probably eat herself up inside watching me take the thing all the way back... Would it be too much of a bother if..."

"Ohhh... Hey... No problem! We brought the station wagon. You can just toss your little boat on top. We got something to tie it down with. It's the least we could do for Jenny. You know she found somebody to take these Cuban toilets we'd been sittin' on off our hands? Guess we can have meatballs with our spaghetti now, eh son? Speakin' of... "

Douglas took them in his good hand as they were passed to him with the appreciation you'd expect of someone being handed their favorite food.

He made some sniffing sounds before asking, "Hey... wait a minute... is that pesto sauce I smell?"

Ever the showman, father Montelli pulled an IV bottle filled with a greenish liquid from under his hat and uncoiled the rubber tubing attached to it.

"Should I hook it right up for ya?"

"Gee pop... I'm almost afraid to ask where you hid the fettucine..."

Mother Montelli drew a large Tupperware bowl from her beach bag, followed by knives, forks, picnic plates, wine glasses and a bottle of Chianti. It was a big bag. They took a few moments of fumbling around for a place to put their little feast before father Montelli realized...

"Oh geeze, where are my manners? Hey Jenny! You want some of this? How 'bout you... Bitsey isn't it?"

"Uh... yeah... Uhm... I think Jenny just went to sleep... I could go for a little diblet of that if you have an extra plate... Uhm..."

The Montellis belatedly realized that they only had settings for four people, but Bitsey was willing enough to improvise.

"Oh wait... Just use the Tupperware lid! I'll just take a salad fork... Oh hold on, I have a camping fork in my purse..."

Sure enough, she pulled out a pocket knife and unfolded the fork attachment. Jenny had bought it for her after being invited along on a visit to one of Bitsey's classmate's summer camp in the Adirondacks, not realizing the 'camp' was one of those massive Great Lodges they used to build in the last century to prove that Man had at last triumphed over Nature.

Since the Montelli's hospitality had only extended to Jenny and Bitsey, we tried to keep as low a profile as the old lady was but eventually their little girl overcame whatever fear or loathing she had for us and waddled over with a piece offering of one of the pepperoni sausages. We don't know a whole lot about Italian cuisine but we do know that pepperoni wasn't even close to Kosher.

"Ummm... you see... We're Jewish and we're kinda not allowed to have that..."

She had a puzzled look asking,"So both of you have it?" like 'Jewish' was a medical condition.

"No that's our religion... You know, like Catholics and Protestants, only ours was around a lot longer..."

She took a while to process that before tossing out a question out from left field.

"What if when you die, one of you goes to Heaven and one of you goes to the other place?"

As surprised as we were, we kinda had an idea about why she was asking us that

"If we got separated... we'd know for sure that we were both in 'the other place'... Anyway our Rabbi told us that how good or bad you were on Earth only determines how close you get to be with God in the hereafter. You're supposed to be good because you want to please Him not because you're afraid of being punished."

"But what if you die before you had a chance to ask for forgiveness for something you did?"

"Yeah... that's kinda why you're not supposed to do bad stuff... He probably takes other things into account though... like if you were sick in the head or something... maybe He judges you for what you are and not necessarily for what you've done..."

Religious scholars we're not, but then we had a good reason not to lean in on the hellfire and damnation angle especially when we've been taught to live as righteous a life as possible because you never knew when it was over - which admittedly left little wiggle room for the atonement of sins. It was Jenny who saved the day for us.

"Could you come over here for a second? I want to tell you something..."

The girl dutifully went to Jenny's side.

"I don't know if I should be telling you this... but I was with your mother when... well she was still alive when I found her. I could hear her trying to breath and her eyes were following me. I told her that she didn't hurt anybody and that if she told God she was sorry for what she'd done she had a chance at forgiveness. Even if she couldn't actually say the words, He'd know... I saw her lips move a little before the end... I'm convinced she had a chance."

Father Montelli broke the silence, "Holy Christ! You was with her when it happened? Oh my god!"

"I woulda still been with her.. That was my car she landed on and I was about to get in it... but I'd just stepped in some dog crap and stopped to scrape it off... Didn't even see her coming... She looked like a bird that fallen out of its nest. Peaceful... no blood or nothing... Guess the good Lord was looking out for both of us that day..."

"Both of you? How do you figure?"

"Well could you imagine what a load that would be on your head if your last thought on this earth was that you're about to take someone with you? Especially when you've had all that time on the way down to think about what you've just done..."

Jenny put her hands to her face, sweeping them up to her hair to compose herself. This was probably the first time she ever really talked about this in the seven or eight years since it happened. The only mention she'd made of it to us was in a letter that said someone fell on her car and broke the roof.

"Gee, I'm real sorry for bringing all this up after so long..."

"Forget about it! With what you had to go through? We should be apologizing to you..."

Father Montelli paused to consider a new train of thought. "There is one thing... I know it's your job... but after going through all that... how could you go and take a picture of her? I woulda been out of my mind!"

"I didn't take it... I'm not saying I wouldn't have, but that wasn't me. I was on a bank run for my dad. I was getting the Christmas bonuses..."

"Ohm hey... I wasn't being mad at you. I was just wondering... During the war I with these combat photographers over in Italy. Came up through Anzio... I could never understand how someone could take pictures with everything that was going on."

"I guess it's like when you got a job to do, it sorta insulates you from what you're going through. If you're just standing there, you gotta think about it..."

Jenny made another sweep of her head, drew a deep breath and exhaled.

As she shuddered from the recounting, we had visions of an arm flopping down on her as she tried to pop the trunk.

"Bitsey?" Jenny took a needed break from this conversation. "I'm sorry about what I was saying to you before. If you want to take your boat up here, that's OK. I had no right to step on you like that..."

Bitsey gave her a 'That's OK, I know you mean well' hug before asking if there was anything she could do or get for her. Jenny sent her and the little girl to the kitchen to see if they had any dinner rolls. We had an idea why.

With the child safely out of earshot she turned back to the topic at hand. "I hate to keep going with this but it's one of those things that's always bothered me... I mean.. why would somebody just... throw their life away like that? I remember at the time there was something in the paper about missing money... seems to be a foolish thing to kill yourself over."

Mother Montelli had this part of the story.

"There was some money missing at her job and they tried to pin it on her... Look... she just got a big insurance check so she didn't need to take any of their dough. Even if she wanted their damn money she couldn't have, she'd only just gotten back from having Leela..."

"Insurance check?"

"Yeah, her husband was on one of those two planes that went down over the Grand Canyon. He was bringing his parents up from L.A. to see her."

"Oh gee, that's awful... and I remember that too. Oh... so she was your daughter..."

"Sorry?"

"Well 'Sadie' doesn't sound all that much like an Italian name so I thought..."

"That was my mother's name. I'm Irish on my side..."

"Oh... Huh... And to think all this time I thought she had been married to Doug..."

"Oh... Pfff... just a lousy little old heart attack..." Jenny always tried to downplay serious stuff like that. She's a sucker for that British understatement stuff. "Well... I kinda banged up my leg a little and I guess I'd been getting all worked up over everything..."

"Whoa... A heart attack? At your age? Damn! And I thought I was having a bad summer..."

His face made a subtle shift as he remembered something.

"Ahhh... geeze... and I was supposed to help you with that dissertation thing of yours!"

"Ohhhh... I wouldn't worry about that now... I don't think I'm gonna be in the architecture business anyway... just not important to me anymore..."

"Not gonna be in the business? Hey... that's too bad! I really liked that building you designed. Kinda looked like something Da Vinci woulda come with if he was still kickin' around..."

"Well... I don't want to go into that... you got enough things to worry about..."

"Well at least we don't hafta worry about these medical bills. Really gotta thank you again Jen... We woulda been really hurtin' if you hadn't come through for us."

"It was no big deal Mister Montelli... We were having a little get together up in The Room to raise money for that one company that got screwed over by Castro... you know the one that was building that new interstate for them? ...and I just happened to mention mention to one of the Zeckendorf people that you had some Latin-style fixtures they could use on that Spanish Harlem project of theirs... It was no big deal. Really..."

"Hey, don't sell yourself short kid. That kind of thoughtfulness still counts for something in this world. What goes around comes around, ya do good things and good things come back to you."

Jenny seemed to groan at the brutal irony of what he just said, but it could've been another fatigue wave. Jenny was never one to wallow in self-pity.

"I know... I'm just not feeling too good right now... Ugh.... I feel like I've just made a big mess of things lately... Say... don't suppose there's any of that fettucine and pesto stuff left over is there? Feeling a little bit peckish and Bitsey sure is taking her sweet time getting back here..."

Of course, Bitsey had just walked in the room with those dinner rolls Jenny had asked for. Jenny put those aside to have at the bowl of fettucine, methodically sporking aside a void for the 'reservoir' of pesto she'd use for dipping.

"This is almost like the stuff we had when granddad took us over to Milan! Pesto's about the same but it looks like you cut the fettucines by hand instead of running it through a machine. Uhm, num num!"

"Oh, you've been to Italy?" Spoken like a man proud of his homeland.

"An engineer who doesn't visit the birthplace of engineering is worth his salarium, now is he? My granddad's in the concrete engineering line so when the Pirelli building was going up he had an excuse to take us over to Milan for a look-see. You ever been to Italy? I mean after the War?"

"We were gonna take Sadie over that July. Had First Class tickets for the Andrea Doria..."

"You're not gonna believe this... but I was on the Doria going the other way. Dead-headed to Cannes with a friend who worked for the Italian Line..."

"You kiddin' me?" She wasn't. She'd told us this story at the time. Hell, it was in Panorama soon after she got home from that trip.

"Oh no... Dad's plane got stuck in the south of France with a thrown rod and the Doria was the quickest way to get there with a spare. We didn't even take a cabin... just hung around the lido deck with the new piston rod in a beach bag! We were on Martha's Vineyard when the Doria was hit. The Coast Guard asked us to stand by for this lady who was trapped in the wreckage and they were gonna try and cut her free but she didn't make it."

"Strange how two people can be right next to each other and not even know it... 'Specially in a city this big."

"Almost like we're destined to keep running into each other..."

A nurse came in to announce that visiting time was nearly over. As the Montellis began to pack their picnic grip away Jenny selected one of the dinner rolls and turned to us for a final request.

"I was going to talk to you two about this, but some things got in the way... Do you really think it was a good idea to invoke the wrath of God to a little girl? Even if she did call you names?"

"Now Leela... If I ever want to make peace or be friends with someone I offer to break bread with them..."

Her voice went down to an inaudible and, since her lips were out of sight, an invisible whisper. We knew the drill. Jenny wouldn't tell you to do something but would merely make a suggestion as to what you might want to do out of your own Free Will. Leela waddled over to us with the duly sanctified offering.

Just when we thought the evening would pass with no more mention of the evening that got Jenny here in the first place little Leela had a request of her uncle Douglas.

"Sing that song Dougie," she squealed. "I wanna hear that song..."

What uncle wouldn't comply with such an eager request?

"Leela snigel... Leela mahn... Rose din ow-gen zoom so lenn... villest du leeb mick? Leela... snigel... mahn...."

The tune was familiar to us in two ways. Obviously we recognized the melody as the 'Little Surfer Girl' song from the Beach Boys, but those were the same lyrics we'd heard Jenny crooning in her sleep.

It was Bitsey that innocently asked where he'd picked up such a crazy tune.

"It was... that lady... I must've been talking about Leela. She just made up this song while she was trying to bring me in."

"What do you suppose it means?"

"It's a song about a little snail," Jenny declared. "'Lilla snigel' is Nordic for 'little snail'. I once put together an art book about snails and found this little Norse poem. I must have a fellow snail lover out there!"

"A snail?" Leela was not a snail lover. "What's so great about snails?"

"Why, they're one of nature's finest engineers! Who do you think makes all those pretty little shells? It's like the man said, they carry their house on their head and bring their destiny with them... It's a fine example to follow I might add..."

As if to prove to herself that she could resist keeping an eye on Bitsey, Jenny occupied herself for a time by marking proposed edits to that manuscript. That lasted about fifteen minutes or so before curiosity or fatigue got the better of her and she put it down to look out at the courtesy bay.

"Aw gee... now you got me watching her..." Douglas must've caught her looking.

"Ahh well... you help bring someone into this world, you kinda get into the habit of looking out for them..."

Hearing the silence of incomprehension from Douglas she explained, "Her mom had passed out while giving birth and it was left to me to help out... At least Bitsey was quick about it... went 'sput!' right into the glove... just got home from a ball game."

"Ahhh.. So you're the Catcher in the Rye!"

"No... I think she played for Connecticut. Stacey was our catcher. I was a pitcher. Had a fun lineup one year... Lessee it was Gerta Hughes on first... Lilly Watt on second... and... uhm.... oh yeah, Clara Eidenau on third.... Then we had Cindy Wright on center and the Polsinellis had the rest of the outfield... There were two Maria Polsinellis in our school growing up, couldn't be more different looking..."

"I hate to ask... but who was the shortstop?"

"Oh Ling Hu was on the track team... I think our shortstop was... Judy... yeah, Judy Long... Like I said it was a fun lineup that year. Sadly, that next year everyone started noticing boys and all of a sudden half the team wouldn't be caught dead on a ball field..."

Jenny raised her weakened arms and let them flop back down, sighing, "...and I had such a great pitching arm..."

"What'd you to them?"

"Best I can figure is that I was swimming all night with the arms on account of my leg being hurt."
"Her car had gone into the drink with her in it about the same time as you," we added. "They found her the next day over in Islip... musta swam all night."

What? Did you think we were going to rat out Jenny after what she'd been through?

"You must've had a better time than I did. Doc told me this arm had completely dislocated - was barely hangin' on by the meat alone..."

"Oh... you better stop right there," Jenny groaned. She drew a deep breath and swallowed to try and tamp down the urge to vomit. When she managed to regain her equilibrium she continued.

"I'd had to move Sadie a little so I could get at the bag with the company payroll. Her arms had stiffened but they were loosened at the shoulders from the landing... ohhh, that was the worst thing of all..."

"Oh gee... I'm so sorry... I'd forgotten about you being right there... You had to move her too?"

"Well it was an awful lot of money and I'd been nervous about being entrusted with it... somehow some of it had spilled onto the floor..."

Jenny stared up at the ceiling as if to recall a forgotten train of thought.

"You know there was a reason I'd asked about that missing money. When I picked up all the money I took it straight back to the bank and made them exchange it for fresh dough. I had put them in little pay envelopes but I still didn't want those bills - cursed money and all that. When they counted everything out there was an extra fifteen hundred in there. You can imagine all the trouble that started, They had to go through the poor teller's records a buncha time... in the end they said their end was accounted for so take your money and screw."

"Didn't even think to think she might've been holding it till the police let me have my car back. The poor thing... well they gave me a box with all the property in the car and there was this one envelope with the words 'help yourself' written on it... I'd seen the newspaper reports about the missing money and thought about turning it in, but I had this vision of her boss sitting there licking the blood off his grubby little fingers as he counted out the dough... I just didn't want to give him the satisfaction..."

"Her boss had claimed that she'd stormed into his office and counted out about three times as much cash as was reported missing and told him how she got it and that proved she didn't need to take his crummy dough. Then she locked herself in one of the other offices... We thought he had pocketed the money all this time..."

"Oh, don't worry about it... You had at least that much coming to replace your car anyway..."

"Yeah... well, the insurance took care of that. The adjuster sure was puzzled about how to enter that one into his report..."

Jenny paused to recall the fond memories of her first car.

"It was a really nice 'Forty-seven DeSoto sedan.... Really loved that thing, called her 'Cynthia'... Got enough money to get another one just like it.... I was even able to get him to give the old car to our high school's shop class to play with. Naturally, they turned it into a convertible. It was the parade car for the Homecoming Queen for a couple years, then the hot-rodders took a whack at it when the engine needed rebuilding."

"So what did you do with the fifteen hundred?"

"I think I ended up giving it away. I was on the scene of this accident... it was the first time I'd covered a real news story. I'm a little hazy about it on account of I was still a little shook up over the other thing... You know... I had built up this idea in my head about what kind of person she was and how she came to end up like she did... I think I based a lot of decisions about my life on not wanting to end up like her... and in the end it looks like I ended up living exactly like I'd thought she had... pretty sad huh?"

"Hey... hey now... don't think like that... That's crazy talk man... You can't check out now... I've only known you a little while but damn... you're something special."

"Oh... I'm just feeling a little low right now... I've been coming off a really bad year. Anyway I wouldn't want to check out till I can slap fifteen hundred bucks down on the table..."

Another silence of incomprehension.

"Figure of speech..."